NPCI Confirms UPI Services Restored After Outage

Rapid Summary

• The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) reported a “partial decline” issue with UPI services due to technical glitches, which was resolved shortly thereafter.
• A sharp surge in complaints was noted on Wednesday evening, exceeding 23,000 after 7 PM.
• Popular payment platforms such as Google Pay and PhonePe experienced disruptions,leaving users unable to complete transactions.
• UPI now accounts for 83% of IndiaS total payment volume at the end of 2024, up from 34% in 2019 (source: RBI Payments System Report).
• The value of UPI transactions has grown exponentially: Rs. 5.86 lakh crore in 2018 to Rs. 246.83 lakh crore by the end of 2024-making it India’s leading payment method over credit and debit cards.
• Outages caused notable challenges for millions reliant on digital payments,raising concerns about service continuity measures given UPI’s critical role in India’s economy.
• NPCI has introduced new guidelines requiring banks and UPI apps to update mobile number records weekly starting April to bolster transaction accuracy and security.

Indian Opinion Analysis
The recent outage highlights the vulnerabilities in a rapidly digitizing economy where reliance on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has grown at an unprecedented scale as its introduction-a shift evident from its dominant share in both transaction volume (83%) and value by the close of 2024. while NPCI acted promptly to resolve issues during this partial decline event,such disruptions pose risks not just for individual users but also businesses heavily dependent on seamless cashless operations.With digital transactions becoming integral across sectors-from retail purchases to government subsidies-the robustness of infrastructure supporting this system needs urgent attention alongside strategies like disaster recovery mechanisms or predictive fault analysis tools ensuring service reliability round-the-clock.

The new mobile number verification rules set forth by NPCI are steps toward mitigating error-prone scenarios; though broader architectural resilience investments might potentially be required long-term amidst India’s accelerating financial digitization journey.

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